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The Year in Class Struggle

Joe DeManuelle-Hall; Dan DiMaggio Jacobin
Labor is going into a new decade weaker than it’s been in nearly a century. But the year was a promising one for those looking for sparks from the US working class — and hoping the new decade can stoke those sparks into a flame.

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A Labor Movement 2020 Election Strategy

Rand Wilson and Peter Olney Organizing Upgrade
Absent a bold, well-articulated working-class program, labor’s agenda risks being crushed by the Democratic Party’s traditional pro-corporate and discredited neo-liberal ideology.

What #MeToo Can Teach the Labor Movement

Jane McAlevey In These Times
For the #MeToo moment to become a meaningful movement, it has to focus on actual gender equality. Lewd stories about this or that man's behavior might make compelling reading, but they sidetrack the real crisis... Until we effectively challenge the ideological underpinnings beneath social policies that hem women in at every turn in this country, we won't get at the root cause of the harassment.

Mend the Gap: 10 Steps Toward a More Equal California

Judith Lewis Mernit CAPITAL & MAIN
As CAPITAL & MAIN's “State of Equality” series has documented, economic inequality poses a grave threat to California’s future. Conditions would be far worse if not for progress made by activists, community leaders and lawmakers. In the last several years, California has generated some of the nation’s most innovative and effective strategies to reverse inequality. Here Judith Lewis Mernit lists 10 landmark achievements worth celebrating,emulating and strengthening.

Bringing Labor Back

Chris Maisano Jacobin Magazine
Anti-union forces can taste the blood in the water, and their offensive is only getting broader. Between efforts to pass right-to-work laws at the state and local levels and legal challenges like Harris v. Quinn and Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, the legal-institutional basis of US trade unions is being dismantled. And once that’s lost, it will probably be impossible to bring unions back as they were before.

Look to the History Of Public Worker Strikes

Joe Burns Labor Notes
The civil rights movement inspired sanitation workers’ strikes throughout the South. Teachers in Florida and Utah pulled off statewide walkouts. Postal workers struck nationwide, in a wildcat conducted against the wishes of union leaders. Police and firefighters contracted “blue flu” and “red rashes” to demand what private sector workers already had: the right to bargain. This wave of militancy won both contracts and changes in labor law.
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